Inside the Corner Store

At least one magazine (small grocery store) is in each neighborhood, and there are often more. This magazine is about 200 yards from my house, and is pretty popular because of its variety of products and reasonable prices. Most of the food is on shelves or in glass cases behind the counter, which allows customers to move through the store without breaking anything.

Everyone who works here knows me by sight as "the American agronome" now, since I stop about once a week to buy a pop or ice cream. I talk with the cashier using some newly learned Russian words if they're not busy, and am very happy that I can now ask in Russian for what I want!

Still Don't Understand Host Sister, but that's OK :-)

My 3 year-old host sister walks into my room at random times to talk, look at my stuff, and look out my window. Since I had my camera close at hand a few weeks ago, I tried to capture her silliness on film. She insisted on taking pictures of me, but I didn't know when she was going to push the button, hence my weird facial expressions. She's having an imaginary conversation on my phone in the video. I think she says something about vegetables at the beginning, and says goodbye at the end. In between, I don't know....

Bus Stops

Nearly all of the bus stops along major city streets have 'magazines' attached to them, small stores selling soft drinks and snacks. At smaller magazines, everything is displayed in the front window, and the customer requests what they want.

I've also seen second-hand clothing stores at bus stops, which I think is a great idea- very convenient to shop and then hop back on the bus and go home!


This is "my" bus stop- Nava Stroika. A large winter ice skating scene covers the back wall, and it has a green plastic overhang to shade people on the bench.

Buses of All Sizes

The photo below this caption shows the usual size of the larger buses in Almaty. Not many are decorated with ads like this one, which advertises dairy products. I've ridden buses from South Korea, Germany, and Russia that have been bought secondhand from those countries. The next photo shows the same bus, which runs on overhead electrical lines. The remaining photos show interiors of other buses.